I Told You We Weren't Going to Lose Touch
by Joycelyn Solo
Summary: Thanks to an old friend, T'Pol and Trip may have a new lease on life. a Fix the Finalé challenge response
1. Chapter 1

**I Told You We Weren't Going to Lose Touch  
a **_Star Trek: Enterprise **- based fan fiction  
by: Joycelyn Solo**_

**Summary: **Thanks to an old friend, T'Pol and Trip may have a new lease on life.   
**Author's note: **This takes place shortly after begins his speech at the end of _These are the voyages_ (aka: _The final episode of _Enterpriseaka: _What the heck were they thinking?_)  
**Disclaimer: **_Star Trek: Enterprise _and associated characters are property of Paramount Pictures. No copyright infringement is intended; this story is for entertainment purposes only.  
**Rating: **G  
**Challenge Response: _Fix the Finalé_** on **Trip/T'Polers  
Genre: **Trip/T'Pol Romance; Angst

Standing alone in the Green Room, T'Pol listened to the polite applause as it welcomed Captain Archer to the podium.

Though she tried, she could not give her full attention to her commanding officer's speech -- one she had heard snippets of for the past four days. In a way, she supposed she should have been grateful for the captain's preoccupation with what he was going to say for this prestigious occasion. His anxiety had been a distraction from the more severe emotions -- yes, emotions -- she refused to let herself feel. The same emotions that had made it nearly impossible for her to meditate since...

Blinking, T'Pol turned her attention to the monitor that allowed her to watch the proceedings in private. Had things been different, T'Pol would have sat with pride beside her crewmates. She would have gladly sat in the company of the Humans who had become her friends in the course of ten years. But the absence of one man, one who had become much more than her friend, prevented her from joining her crewmates in the audience.

He had been her confidante, her lover, the father of her child.

And, now, he was gone.

Trip was gone.

The Human who had come to mean more to her than any being in her life, had been taken from her in a foolishly self-sacrificial act only he could be capable of. For reasons T'Pol could not fathom, the engineer had thought that destroying himself was the only way to protect Archer and assure the captain's safe arrival back on Earth for the all-important speech.

Along with the grief his death brought, T'Pol could not suppress her anger. Only Trip would have been able to anger her in death as he had in life. Only he could make her acknowledge the emotions she had worked all her life to suppress; just as he had once brought her feelings of love, joy and belonging.

The Human who had done so much for her was gone. And she had unable to help him when he needed her most.

Even as the guilt, another emotion, threatened, T'Pol could imagine Trip's voice as he admonished her for such thoughts. He would have said, in that garbled way of his that passed for English, "There wasn't anything you could have done." But T'Pol, alone with her grief, couldn't help but wonder.

"There really wasn't anything you could have done."

T'Pol stiffened. The admonishment had come from behind her, and had sounded so much like Trip, that she knew she must have imagined it. The lack of meditation, in addition to affecting her tenuous control of her emotions, was obviously allowing her mind to play tricks on her.

"A fella's dead a couple days and this is the welcome he gets?"

Turning slowly, T'Pol could not stop the widening of her eyes or the strangled noise that emitted from her throat. "Trip? But you..." Sure she was imagining the smiling Human before her, she drew a deep breath and straightened her spine. With calm detachment, she informed the apparition, "You are dead."

"Well," he said, taking a seat and making himself comfortable. "I _was_ dead. Or pretty close to it. But an old friend of ours didn't like that idea."

"An old friend?" she asked, staring at the man who was, perhaps, not a hallucination caused by her emotional state. He seemed real enough. The chair had given under his weight. She could smell him -- the scent achingly familiar. If she concentrated, she could almost feel the echo of their long-dormant bond. He was...

As her mind raced for rational explanations of her former lover's return from the dead, T'Pol was distracted by a shimmer in the air that took the shape of a man -- a man she recognized.

"Crewman Daniels."

"Hello, Sub-commander," the time-travelling agent, or so had his claim always been, smiled faintly at T'Pol. "It's 'Commander,' now, isn't it? I'm sure this is quite a shock for you, but Commander Tucker insisted on seeing you himself, first."

T'Pol was at a loss, her gaze going from one supposedly dead man to the other. "You died nearly seven years ago," she informed the man who may or may not have been Daniels.

"That's what I told him," Trip -- or the Human who bore a striking resemblance to the man T'Pol knew as Trip -- said.

"And, as I told Commander Tucker, that's one of the tricky things about temporal mechanics. Yes, to you, I died seven years ago. For me, however, it hasn't happened yet. The man you saw die _was_ me, only several years in my own future."

"Don't worry, T'Pol," Trip said. "I didn't understand it much the first time he told me, either."

"And when, exactly, was that?" T'Pol asked.

"About six hundred years from now," Trip answered.

Daniels, much to T'Pol's surprise, rolled his eyes at the commander. "If you will take a seat, Commander, I will explain from the beginning -- or the beginning as you know it."

T'Pol took a seat, more for her own comfort than for Daniel's suggestion. If she was indeed hallucinating, she figured a sitting position would prove less of a hazard.

"Four days ago, a dying Commander Tucker was placed in the hypobaric chamber in hopes of saving him." Daniels began, watching T'Pol flinch at the reminder. "However, the body that later came out of the chamber was not Commander Tucker."

"Who's body was it?" T'Pol asked.

"Actually, it wasn't anybody's body," Trip answered. "It was a fake with some of my blood on it to make it look real enough for everyone."

"For what purpose?"

Daniels, shooting Trip an annoyed look, continued, "Shortly after Commander Tucker was placed in the chamber, he was transported to a medical facility in the twenty-seventh century and his injuries healed."

"If you hoped to prevent the commander's death, why did you not simply stop Shran's agressors or warn _Enterprise_ of their pending intrusion?"

"Because of one man," Daniels answered, inclining his head toward the monitor. "Archer had to make this speech -- the exact speech he's giving now -- for the United Federation of Planets to form. For him to make this speech, Commander Tucker had to die."

"But, as I can see, Commander Tucker is not dead."

Daniels opened his mouth to answer, but Trip leaned forward and beat him to it. "It turns out, I wasn't really supposed to die. In fact, I've still got an important role to play in history." He smiled widely. "Actually, _we_ have an important part to play in history."

"You weren't supposed to tell her, Commander," Daniels informed Trip, his voice resigned.

"You've been telling me I'm not 'supposed to' do a lot of things, Daniels. Have I listened to you once, yet?"

From the look on the time-traveler's face, T'Pol assumed that Trip had been just as much trouble in the future as he had ever been in her present.

"What role are we supposed to play, exactly?" she asked.

Trip looked at her, his blue eyes drawing her into their depths. "I told you we weren't going to lose touch."

Their gazes intent on each other, the commanders barely noticed as the temporal transport effect claimed Daniels and retuned him to the future. A future that, with the Trip and T'Pol reunited, was once again a brighter place.  



	2. Chapter 2

**I Told You We Weren't Going to Lose Touch  
a **_Star Trek: Enterprise **- based fan fiction  
by: Joycelyn Solo**_

**Summary: **Thanks to an old friend, T'Pol and Trip may have a new lease on life.   
**Author's note: **This takes place shortly after begins his speech at the end of _These are the voyages_ (aka: _The final episode of _Enterpriseaka: _What the heck were they thinking?_)  
**Disclaimer: **_Star Trek: Enterprise _and associated characters are property of Paramount Pictures. No copyright infringement is intended; this story is for entertainment purposes only.  
**Rating: **G  
**Challenge Response: _Fix the Finalé_** on **Trip/T'Polers  
Genre: **Trip/T'Pol Romance; Angst

It was amazing how dying -- or getting awfully close to it -- could change a man's perspective on life.

Waking up six hundred years in the future and being told that he "died" was a bit of a shock to a man who, last he remembered, had been trying his best to bluff the _Enterprise_ intruders into getting themselves blown up.

Why he'd had the brilliant idea to blow himself up in the process, he really didn't know. It had seemed like a good idea -- the only idea -- at the time. As far as he was concerned, getting Jonathon Archer to Earth, preferably unharmed, in time for the most important speech the man would ever give was a top priority.

Trip didn't mind being a minor footnote in history. But the captain...the captain was the future. He may not have wanted to take credit for it, but from what Daniels had said, Jonathon Archer was the single most important person for the future.

And that was where Daniels screwed up.

Seated in the Green Room with T'Pol, Trip explained how Daniels had tried to talk the captain out of sacrificing himself on a suicide mission to destroy the Xindi weapon. "Daniels told the Cap'n about his importance in the formation of a union of species throughout the galaxy."

"Daniels efforts were obviously in vain," T'Pol commented. "The captain went ahead with the mission."

"Which eventually turned out all right," Trip smiled crookedly, "What with us stopping the Xindi and ending up in an alternate alien-Nazi past."

T'Pol nodded, remembering the following year's events all too clearly. Her marriage to Koss, the rift with Trip and the loss of their daughter Elizabeth. In the end, it had been too much for their relationship and they had drifted apart.

"What Daniels didn't count on," Trip continued, "Was that the Cap'n told me about the role he was going to play in this alien union. I'm still not sure why the he told me. Maybe he thought I'd feel better about Elizabeth if I knew that children of mixed heritage would have a place in the future. I didn't even think much about it at the time, not until we were called back to Earth for the summit and received orders for _Enterprise's _decommissioning."

"Which was why you were so preoccupied with the captain's speech."

"And why I was mother-henning him about not taking any chances with his safety."

T'Pol frowned, a true frown that nearly surprised Trip with its presence on her usually smooth features. "That is why you sacrificed yourself."

Trip laid a hand on T'Pol's, squeezing gently. "At the time, I didn't think my own contribution to history meant a whole lot. The most important thing was the captain, and that was the only thing I could think of to ensure he would be safe."

"But Daniels brought you back."

"By telling the Cap'n and then the Cap'n telling me, Daniels messed up the timeline."

T'Pol was silent a moment, staring down at their joined hands. "I thought I had lost you. That I had lost any chance to tell you..."

"I know," Trip choked out, unsure where the wave of grief he suddenly felt had come from. He regarded T'Pol curiously, wondering if that bond-thing was trying to reestablish a itself. "In those final moments, before I...died...all I could think of was you and how sorry I was to leave you."

Any response T'Pol had was interrupted by a round applause that thundered through the auditorium. Though his "death" had been for the sake of the speech being given at the moment, Trip was paying little attention to it.

When the noise subsided, T'Pol asked, "Why did Daniels not simply intervene as he has done before and warned us of the attack?"

Trip shrugged. "Daniels wouldn't tell me more than what he already told you. In fact, he was pretty upset that I already found out more than I was supposed to while I was recuperating in the twenty-seventh century."

One eyebrow rose as T'Pol waited for Trip to elaborate.

"Well, as advanced as their facility computers were, it wasn't too difficult for me to access a couple of history files when none of the medical technicians were paying attention."

"That would explain Daniels' apparent annoyance with you."

"You noticed that, huh?" Trip smiled. "Yeah. A little knowledge of the future can be a dangerous thing, as my 'death' proved. But I didn't know Daniels planned on sending me back until after I read those files."

He took both of T'Pol's hands in his. "When I pulled my little stunt, I was doing it for a future where our daughter could have lived. What I didn't realize, was that I was doing it for a future where our sons _will _live."

"What do you --"

"That role we're supposed to play," Trip interrupted, "Is as parents. We're going to raise our daughter in a galaxy where she won't be viewed as an oddity but a vision of what will come from the cooperation of all planets."

"How is that possible?" T'Pol asked.

"Daniels warned me not to tell you too much, but I figure once our bond strengthens again you'll know anyway." Trip stood, pulling T'Pol up with him, as another roar of applause sounded in the auditorium. "When I told you before that we weren't going to lose touch, I was right. According to _history_, we're going to meet again at the Cap'n's wedding...and a few years later we're going to celebrate our own."

Before T'Pol could respond, Trip pressed a soft kiss to her lips. "And, a few years after that, we're going to start a family."

T'Pol stared at him, it was all she could do for several minutes, as she processed this new information. "What will we be doing between now and our wedding?"

"According to the files I snuck into, you go back to Vulcan and I'm assigned to _Columbia_, again." He gave her hands, still in his, a small squeeze. "Of course, I don't know how closely we have to follow history. Daniels and his friends have already mucked things up for us a couple of times now. I think it's time we took things into our own hands."

She could not help the eyebrow that quirked above her eye. "And how, exactly, do you intend to do that?"

"Well, as soon as I'm done shocking the Cap'n and Malcolm and everyone else, I think I'm going to take you to meet my parents." He smiled. "After that, we'll see where the future takes us."  



End file.
